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An Actors Tools

Actors utilise many tools in order to successfully convey ideas to an audience. There are many techniques an actor must possess in order to convey their ideas to the audience. These include physicality, focus, characterisation and improvisation. Actors use these techniques to improve their improvisation skills and improve the quality of their performance. In the workshops conducted during class, students focused on improving these techniques in order to maintain a satisfactory performance. Physicality is one of the most significant techniques that an actor possesses in order to express their ideas and emotions effectively. It is based on body movement and motion. Our group performance did not include any dialogue and was based on the theme of ‘Greed’. The purpose of the performance was to put forward and show the audience how conflict can arise between people and how power can corrupt relationships. Putting this performance was a hassle getting everyone together at the same time although we managed to use our rehearsal time effectively. This performance required various physical movements which helped establish a level of understanding and believability towards the audience. As well as physicality, focus is also a main technique an actor develops in order to present their performance. Focus is when a performer concentrates their attention on a person, object or event. Focus intends to capture and engage the audience to a particular point. It is effective because without it an actor is not able to present their character successfully and they would not be able to express the story through the actions conducted by the actor. An example where focus was enhanced throughout a workshop was when we had to create a pose representing the emotion that the teacher announced. The aim was to focus on the emotion and stay in the pose for as long as we could regardless of intentional distractions surrounding us. Another technique that is fundamentally used is...

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...Technology Breeds Narcissism
The technology that we invented in order to make our lives easier might in fact turn our lives for the worst. In Pain won’t kill you by Jonathan Franzen, he talks about our social life which is revolving around technology rather than the society itself. In every moment of our lives the advance of technology is thriving and expanding exponentially. We humans cannot do anything but get greedy and try to get our hands on everything possible. The act of socializing with the people around us has disappeared and the new gadgets have taken over. People are becoming narcissistic and self-absorbing because of the newly created technology that is being pushed by society.
In our current society, everyone is looking for their perfect ideal soul mate, but little do they realize that they have already made one. In a relationship we look for a partner that “asks for nothing and gives everything”; this is exactly what technology is. Jonathan Franzen talks about how he replaced his old Black-Berry Pearl to a Black-Berry Bold. Our old phones won’t have anything to say and it is a win-win situation. We tend to replace our real personal relationship with human beings to the devices around us. We are so self-centered that we tend to forget the real relations that we have with humans and this is exactly what the author wanted us to think. Franzan uses motif and metaphor in his writing to display the self-absorbed lives that humans are living in. By using this...

...﻿ THE ACTOR 2011
In 1927, silent film George Valentin is standing for pictures outside of his latest film. When a young woman, Peppy Miller, accidentally hits into him. Valentin ignores it, and shows off the cameras. “The next day Peppy finds herself on the front page of newspaper with headline who is that girl” Later, she goes to auditory as a dancer for Valentins show. Like that she becomes more and more popular, and when the director of the kinograph studios decided to pass to “talkies”. George Valentin was a silent movie actor and he didn’t want to take part in talkies, so he fired himself. After that he didn’t had any job, and he was replaced by Pappy Miler. Soon in 1929 after stock market crash he was bankrupt. His wife kicked him out, and he moves into apartment. Peppy goes on and becomes the major Hollywood star. Later, the bankrupt Valentin is forced to auction off all his things, and fires Clifton, his driver, telling him to get a new job. Angrily, and drunk, Valentin angrily sat dawn and watched to his colection of his early films. He puts all of the movies together and puts them into fire, by the smoke and passes out inside the burning house, still clutching a single film box. After a policeman comes and rescues Valentin. Than people took him to hospital for his injuriese. Peppy visits him in hospital and takes him to her house.
Peppy asks the director of...

...to breathe. And although I can shoot better than most, doesn’t mean I know everything there is to it. I still mess up on safety and without safety everyone is in danger.
Although, some people think its challenging to shoot, it really isn’t. A simple way to look at how to shoot is look down a sight and pull the trigger. But on the other hand it is complicating. You have to judge and make precise measurements according to what you feel. Not everyone has the proper tools to make these measurements so it will just take practice and knowledge to understand them. You make these measurements to be sure you know where you’re shooting. If you don’t know where you are shooting, then you don’t know where the bullet is going. And if you don’t know that then you can NOT guarantee anybody’s safety.
By now, you probably think you can do all this in seconds. Look down that bright shiny dot and wail away, maybe unless you’re actually thinking about what I’m saying at the end each paragraph. What about how you’re holding the tool? If it’s loose in your shoulder, then it is going to kick back, and might just knock you senseless, and leave a nasty, black and purple, funny shaped bruise. Ouch. I can remember coming back a few times with horrible nasty marks on my arm looking like we might have to amputate. But that is only one thing out of many that can go wrong, and honestly, that’s the best thing that could go wrong. Any other mistakes could EASILY be lethal...

...﻿The Role of the Actor in the Industry
There is not one precise route to becoming an actor but there is a common direction most aspirant actors take. Training for an actor can be acquired in numerous ways. An actor could be trained academically, through studio schools or through pure experience.
The young actors’ career will undoubtedly begin with pure experience through small scale performances. The small scale performances could take place through school, outside social clubs or other children’s associations. To begin the larger scale experiences, the hopeful actor would customarily attempt to be represented by an agent. Gaining an agent at such an early stage in the actors’ career is rather difficult. Therefore, joining an organisation such as The Spotlight is habitually the route actors take.
The Spotlight is a small organisation with a massive output. It is the hub of the industry where you advertise yourself, whether you have an agent or not. It is essential that you are in it – it is the first port of call for virtually everybody who is casting productions. (Dunmore, 1991, p.35).
In this research explains the necessity of being involved in The Spotlight organisation. It is explained as the ‘hub’ for getting jobs in the entire industry and is used by thousands of actors. Although the propaganda and necessity...

...Activity 6: Chasing down Allusions in Hamlet
|Allusions |Literal Meaning |How does it develop theme |Sources |
|I would have such a fellow|Shakespeare is trying to teach through his play |It develops the theme because Hamlet wanted to |"Hamlet Text and Translation - Act III, Scene II." eNotes - Literature |
|whipped for o’erdoing |how some actors over act during the play. In |convey his message through the real acting in |Study Guides, Lesson Plans, and More. November 03, 2010. |
|Termagant (III,ii,14) |these lines, Hamlet is forbidding actors from |the play that would force Claudius to tell the |. |
| |overdoing their role throughout the play and he |truth about his father’s murder. |"What does this quote mean from Hamlet? And how does it relate to the |
| |will get them whipped if they do. | |theme? - Yahoo! Answers." Yahoo! Answers - Home. November 3, 2010. |
| | | |. |
|It out herods Herod |Hamlet is talking to the troupe of players and |Hamlet uses many allusions throughout this |"Out-herod:...

...3.4 Types of Actors
Figure 3.2 Types of Actors and Some Current Actors Who Fit Each Category
Impersonators
Dustin Hoffman brings Lenny Bruce to life. The performance is so convincing and Lenny so gritty that today’s audiences may think they are seeing Lenny Bruce himself.Photo by Mary Evans/Ronald Grant/courtesy Everett Collection
The term impersonator is considered somewhat demeaning in the acting world, suggesting that the actor has simply copied the manner, dialect, and behavior of a character, instead of creating the character. There are times when such a skill is useful—when a filmmaker needs a portrayal of a recognizable historical figure, for instance, but doesn’t want to distract the audience by casting a recognizable actor in the role.
Better still are the actors who can play a famous character and yet go beyond a mere impersonation. Think of Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, in which he convincingly played author Truman Capote, right down to the trademark lisp. Yet he was also able to bring something of himself to the role (for which he won an Oscar). The physical resemblance helped, of course (as it did for Helen Mirren in her role as Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen or David Strathairn, who played famed television reporter Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck). But it’s not essential. Anthony Hopkins looks nothing like Richard Nixon, but he brilliantly...

...﻿1. The subject matter of phonetics
Phonetics is a science devoted to the physical analysis of the sounds of human speech, including their production, transmission, and perception.
Phonetics is traditionally divided into two branches: acoustic, concerned with the structure of the acoustic signal itself, and articulatory, concerned with the way these sounds are produced.
Theoretical Phonetics studies speech sounds:
1) from every point of view.
Articulatory point of view - every speech sound is a complex of definite finely coordinated and differentiated movements and positions of the various speech organs.
Acoustic - speech sounds have certain physical properties.
Phonological - speech sounds are studied through the phonological oppositions.
Auditory - all of speech sounds have infinite number of features.
2) studies mechanisms of vowel and consonant production:
Vibrator mechanism - vocal cords
Resonator mechanism - oral cavity, nasal cavity
Obstructer mechanism - tongue, VC, teeth
Power mechanism - lungs, diaphragm
3) sounds are studied not only separately but in clusters and in speech. Thus we've come to kinetics and kinesthetic factors.
4) the matter of analysis:
- description - setting down as many as possible features which are present in sounds.
- classification - mentioning those features by which sounds utter.
One of the main subjects is intonation. Theoretical phonetics views it from the point of view of different schools and approaches:...